‘I have grounds for certainty that I cannot share with anyone. But there is one thing on which you may advise me. I have – I have received a letter; and I am at a loss whether I should show it to the police. I should like to leave it in your hands, Utterson; you would judge wisely, I am sure; I have so great a trust in you.’
‘You fear, I suppose, that it might lead to his detection?’ asked the lawyer.
‘No,’ said the other. ‘I cannot say that I care what becomes of Hyde; I am quite done with him. I was thinking of my own character, which this hateful business has rather exposed.’
Utterson ruminated awhile; he was surprised at his friend’s selfishness, and yet relieved by it. ‘Well,’ said he, at last, ‘let me see the letter.’
The letter was written in an odd, upright hand, and signed ‘Edward Hyde’: and it signified, briefly enough that the writer’s benefactor, Dr Jekyll, whom he had long so unworthily repaid for a thousand generosities, need labour under no alarm for his safety, as he had means of escape on which he placed a sure dependence. The lawyer liked this letter well enough: it put a better colour on the intimacy than he had looked for; and he blamed himself for some of his past suspicions.
‘Have you the envelope?’ he asked.
‘I burned it,’ replied Jekyll, ‘before I thought what I was about. But it bore no postmark. The note was handed in.’
‘Shall I keep this and sleep upon it?’ asked Utterson.
‘I wish you to judge for me entirely,’ was the reply. ‘I have lost confidence in myself.’
‘Well, I shall consider,’ returned the lawyer. ‘And now one word more: it was Hyde who dictated the terms in your will about that disappearance?’
The doctor seemed seized with a qualm of faintness; he shut his mouth tight and nodded.
‘I knew it,’ said Utterson. ‘He meant to murder you. You have had a fine escape.’
‘I have had what is far more to the purpose,’ returned the doctor solemnly: ‘I have had a lesson – O God, Utterson, what a lesson I have had!’ And he covered his face for a moment with his hands.
On his way out, the lawyer stopped and had a word or two with Poole. ‘By the bye,’ said he, ‘there was a letter handed in today: what was the messenger like?’ But Poole was positive nothing had come except by post; ‘and only circulars by that,’ he added.
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